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Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Finally!

If there's one thing I try and grow, every year, it's spaghetti squash. This year I struggled to get them out of the ground, because the bush rats and mice, were eating the seeds. For those that did survive, night marauders, would behead the plants by morning, and the remaining stalk would be dead by midday.

I did manage to get a few vines to maturity. Far less than I'm used to, but at least now I had a fighting chance at getting fruit. I kept what little water I had, up to them, so the blessed things would flower. Which they finally did. Oh, but only male flowers. For weeks. So I tip-pruned to encourage more female flowers, but for some reason they rotted before being able to open.

I had all but given up, recently. Seems I wouldn't be manually fertilising any female flowers, this year - as none of them were surviving. Then the other day, while out in the garden...

Fruit

...low and behold, I discovered a lonely fruit, hiding behind the leafs. FINALLY!! The bees must have been doing their job, in the early morning. I'm hoping once the weather cools in autumn, I may get a second flush of flowers, that will do much better. I suspect it's the constant heat, which is stressing the plants.

Looks to be no rain forecast (again) and a long stretch of hot days ahead. Compared to previous summers, the temperatures are much lower (like under 40 degrees Celsius - but not, by much). So I am at least grateful for those small mercies. Like a lone fruit of spaghetti squash, that overcame the odds too.

14 comments:

I bought seeds of it for the first time this year, but somehow they didn't get sown. So it looks like next year. Never mind. I'm getting a few ordinary zucchinis. I'm wondering why it is that the male flowers always open first with these plants? I've never seen any decent biological explanation, have you? It seems a waste of energy to be producing flowers that won't help with the propagation of the species. And then when the females do come, there never seem to be any males! I do the paintbrush thing too. Can't trust the pollinators any more.

I was doing a little research on this today, Bev. It seems temps play a large factor in what flowers are doing. Plants will stop absorbing water around the mid 30's and female flowers may abort to conserve energy for the plants survival. Which is probably why, there only seems to be male flowers around. So the hotter we get, the more problems we'll run into with the Cucurbits family. Interesting.

The window for growing these delicious fruits, is getting increasingly smaller. I notice where my vines get some shade protection from other plants in the afternoon, is where all the female flowers are coming in. I wondered why the other two vines, weren't producing any at all. But they cop the heat of the afternoon sun. So placement makes a difference.

I love spaghetti squash. Since I've been doing the low carb thing the last 15 months it has really saved me. I grew ours on a tall trellis last summer and it did great. It will be four months or so before we're in the garden here in Illinois but you've made me look forward to it.

Low carb has great health benefits. But I always up it slightly, to match my energy usage for the day. Otherwise I crash and burn, lol. So good to hear the spaghetti squash, did so splendidly for you. It's yummy stuff!

So hot isn't it Chris? Not up to 40C as you say but consistently hot which is unusual without a few storms. We were supposed to get rain yesterday but none fell here apart from a little light rain last night if you could call it rain. I don't have much growing here at present due to the heat. Bring on winter!

Not having the storms, is something new to me. We've always had longer gaps between storms, but never without 2-4 heavy downpours in a season. Having no serious rainfall at all, is turning everything crispy-brown. We missed out on the winter rains, last year too. But since the weather has been topsy-turvy of late, who knows - maybe it will all come with a vengeance in the cooler weather, lol?

I lucked out on all the melon and squash plants this year. I did get two butternut pumpkins and that was about it. I have left the plants all to keep going and water occaisionally. The big leaves are at least stopping the area around them from baking to much. I need to get some soil wetting agent into the ground ASAP as water is no longer penetrating. The joys of gardening when there hasnt been any significant rain for quite a long time. We are much better off than those poor souls further west.

I have a real appreciation for the pioneers who settled in this country. The crops which are such staples in the more moderate-temperate parts of the world, just won't produce here. Even if you can get the plant to survive. The heat is just too extreme.

It's possible they did come up Sherri, but something ate them early in the piece. I had that happen a couple of times. I thought they weren't germinating, even though I was putting water on them. It was only once we got the first rains of spring and things started to grow again, that I noticed a batch came up. But then slowly, one by one, they disappeared again.

This happened to coincide with the chickens moving out of the main coop, and the rodents moving in. So I reckon it was the rodents taking advantage of my seeds, and then the seedlings. Once I saw the snake activity increase, I saw my seedlings emerge and develop as they should.

The ones I can find for sale, in season, are around $7 a piece! Although, they are worth it, and can you really go wrong eating vegetables? Now I can't say the same thing, about seven bucks worth of chocolate! ;)